Laika, the stop-motion film studio behind cult classics (and fan favourites) Coraline, ParaNorman, and Kubo and the Two Strings – to name a few – has had a bumper 2026, celebrating its 20th anniversary of filmmaking and the upcoming release of Wildwood, its latest feature. But the fun hasn’t stopped there. Wildwood has now made its way to London’s Design Museum following the film’s world premiere at the London Film Festival on the 11th of October and the rave reviews it has already garnered.
Wildwood: The Exhibition, open until January 10th, will host the costumes, sets, puppets and prototypes behind the film, amongst a plethora of other unseen objects, letting us in on both the technical and creative processes of the production. As Wildwood, directed by Travis Knight, is a stop-motion film, there’s an enormity of moving parts both in front of and behind the camera, from background painters and model makers to cinematographers and set builders. All of this is explored across the exhibition, detailing the film’s production from the final thing all the way back to the very first idea of it – a timeline as intricate as the sets themselves. “This exhibition gives audiences a rare opportunity to see the extraordinary artistry and ingenuity behind the film,” CMO of Laika, David Burke, says, “and to understand how thousands of individual creative decisions come together to build a cinematic world.”
The exhibition certainly celebrates the extent of the many, many moving parts involved in Laika’s films and, in doing so, lauds the intrinsically collaborative nature of the company’s creative process – including the relationship between Wildwood’s hands-on, analogue stop motion setup and Laika’s utilisation of technology. With films like Wildwood, the craft Laika’s makers and animators have spent two decades perfecting sits alongside the technical roles, working in sync with one another. The exhibition’s aim, alongside celebrating Wildwood, is also to showcase the creative careers possible in stop-motion animation by exhibiting the sheer extent of the people, practices and processes that make up just a single film. Design, technology, and engineering are all as integral and inextricably linked to Wildwood as the imagination behind its concept, making the film a technical treat as well as an original spectacle.
Speaking of spectacle, Wildwood is due to be Laika’s most expansive, scenic film yet, with enormous physical sets occupied and explored by its characters – some of which will greet visitors at the exhibition. The large-scale installation, which was inspired by the Oregon landscape that surrounds the Portland-based studio, makes up only part of the story, with early sketches, development, concept art and more filling in the blanks of the fictional world – a world you can see come to life on screen from October 23, 2026. The It’s Nice That team actually got a special sneak peak at before the exhibition opened it’s doors to the public, and we were blown away by the detail and craftsmanship on display. Its scale and abundance leaves you with an unparalleled appreciation for the sheer volume of skill that goes into making something like Wildwood.
Wildwood: The Exhibition has a free-to-visit introduction on the museum’s mezzanine, and is open at the Design Museum, London, until 10 January 2027. Tickets are on sale now.